March 18-27, 2000
Mike and Cindy Fahay, Locust, New Jersey
Frequent Reference to:
We spent three days in and around Nariva Swamp on this trip and found
a very nice, inexpensive guest house from which to operate in Mayaro (actually
down the road a piece in the St. Margaret Region). It's called Azee's (phone:
868 630-4619). The rooms are inexpensive, comfortable and clean, a maid
will do your laundry for a small fee, and the food was great. Because Murphy's
mileage markers are a bit off in this region, we recalculated his birding
spots in reverse, starting at the steel bridge (incidentally, no longer
in use) in the small fishing village of Ortoire (at the mouth of the Ortoire
River) as the zero point. Proceeding north from there along the beach road,
you only need to know that the road at 2.5 km is the left turn you want
to take to get into the "Melon Patch", where you'll find lots to keep your
birding attention. There will probably be a guy selling coconut milk at
the junction of this road and the main beach road. Red-bellied macaws are
almost automatic here at dusk, although we would argue with the "hundreds"
figure we've seen thrown around. Incidentally, Azee's is 12 km south of
the Ortoire River steel bridge, on the road that parallels the beach. A
brief road trip south from Azee's will put you in good country for pearl
kites. Watch the wires.
My focus in this report will be on only two spots, the Heights of Aripo
and the remote village of Gran Riviere. I agree with several others who
have complained about details in Murphy's guidebook. It does need updating
and correcting. My wife and I prefer to be walking a rainforest trace nailing
birds to sitting in a rental car trying to match the written descriptions
with missing landmarks, or frustrated by an odometer that apparently measures
in units other than those used by Murphy. Things change rather quickly
in the tropics. Traces become overgrown, ownership and their landmark signs
are replaced, "Private Property" signs spring up intended to keep out loggers
and squatters, but not necessarily you, the birder, and finally, road markers
that used to mark kilometers are now being replaced by orange and black
stones indicating miles. Having said that, the Murphy book is still indispensable
as a source of information, at least as a starting point. Get it and use
it. And write to the author, compliment him profusely, and suggest that
he update details for a revised edition.
We would suggest that you skip all the stops mentioned in Murphy's chapter
on the Heights of Aripo, and instead proceed directly to the Dandrade Trace
parking spot. The earlier in the day you get there, the better. This is
a major reason to skip the lower stops, which will be hard to find anyway.
The Dandrade Trace wanders for 15 km (apparently...we didn't make it to
the end) through excellent rainforest habitat, with several stretches providing
a high canopy combined with a thick growth on the forest floor. The intervening
bare trunks provide ample opportunities to spot woodcreepers and other
hard-to-find species. You can expect no automobile traffic on this trace.
After returning to your car, with a lengthy list of birds, you can easily
figure out the other places of interest on your trip back down the mountain
toward the Eastern Main Road. The water cress ponds are easy to find, as
are the numerous pull-outs along the way. Incidentally, this trip will
also produce a lot of raptors, mostly flying, rarely perched. Identifying
them based on ffrench's field guide will be tough. We recommend xeroxing
the black & white raptors in flight plates from the Guide to Birds
of Venezuela, and carrying them tucked into the back of your ffrench's.
In fact, we carried along our copy of the de Schauensee & Phelps field
guide and consulted it often. For many species, their plates are clearly
superior to those in ffrench.
The real surprise for us was finding a spot not mentioned in Murphy's
book, containing habitats not well-described in the ffrench field guide's
preliminary chapters. We went to Gran Riviere, in the northeast corner
of Trinidad, on the advice of a friend we had met in Tobago on our first
trip in 1997. She told us about a small hotel there, where nesting loggerhead
turtles come up on the beach directly in front of the veranda. Sounded
good, although she was not a birder and was vague on birding opportunities
in the region. We spent three days there, found lots of birds, and had
an extremely relaxing time, with great food an added bonus. The hotel is
the Mt. Plaisir Hotel (website: www.mtplaisir.com;
e-mail: info@mtplaisir.com) run by Piero, a retired (for the time being)
photo-journalist from Italy. Our room was awesome, very comfortable, very
Caribbean, and reminiscent of a tree house. The food is simple, but elegantly
prepared and wonderful. We didn't drive there (a 2-hour trip from Piarco
Airport), instead returned our rental car and let the Mt. Plaisir folks
pick us up in their van. The transport fee was $50.00 US one way, which
included both of us. We liked this option as it allowed us more opportunity
to check out the villages, scenery, and birds along the way. There is also
a guest house in Gran Riviere, upstairs from the small storefront at the
main intersection. We don't have details on this spartan spot, but doubt
seriously that you need a reservation to stay there.
The village of Gran Riviere is situated at the foot of the Northern
Range's rainforest (facing north), and between the mouths of two rivers.
It is very nearly at the end of the road...literally, for there is no connection
between Blanchisseusse and Matelot, except for a hiking trail (which we
also spent a day exploring...from the Blanchisseuse end going east). Gran
Riviere has a small pocket beach on Gran Riviere Bay, bracketed by rocky
headlands (great snorkeling). Behind the village is a sizable cultivated
area, in a very small valley before the rainforest ascent begins. The bird
opportunities, therefore, include marine species, freshwater birds including
white-winged swallows and kingfishers, and a wide spectrum of rainforest
and lowlands landbirds. The birding is pretty good around town and on the
hotel grounds. But we spent two full days walking from the main corner
of town, through the very productive cultivated area along Montevideo Trace,
then turning right onto the Esperanza Trace through lush rainforest, winding
around and always up, until we detected a noticeable faunal change with
altitude. These were all-day hikes, and we carried water and snacks. Intermittent
showers on those two days kept the birds active throughout the day. Don't
be in too much of a hurry to get through the cultivated area (about 20
acres?). It's full of good stuff, including antbirds, woodpeckers, flycatchers,
many hummingbirds, including all the hermits, white-necked jacobin and
tufted coquette, and with raptors, woodpeckers, swifts and parrots cruising
by overhead. Once on the Esperanza Trace, you will soon begin an upward
climb through very productive rainforest, only occasionally broken by small
banana cultivations. About a mile up the trail, we found a joint oropendola-cacique
colony in a tall mora tree, and were able to record the bedlam on our tape
recorder. On another walk, you might want to stay on Montevideo Trace another
quarter mile or so past the Esperanza Trace, until you come to a house
in a clearing on a hilltop, where a self-appointed Pawi Warden will collect
a few TTs from you and show you Trinidad piping guans in the trees surrounding
his property. While there, check out the ground under the nutmeg trees
and pick up a few to take home. Freshly ground nutmeg is absolutely essential
to a proper rum-punch. We found three piping guans on our own along the
small footpath that encircles this hilltop, along with all three trogons
and several antbirds.
Despite a few torrential rainstorms while we were there, in two days plus a morning of birding, we racked up a total of 89 species in the vicinity of Gran Riviere, including many new ones for us. Highlights included all three trogons, Trinidad piping guan, 9 hummingbirds including tufted coquette, antbirds (silvered antbird, white-bellied antbird, black-faced antthrush, barred and great antshrikes, white flanked antwren), 12 flycatchers (including white-throated spadebill, piratic flycatcher, nesting boat-billed flycatchers, nesting streaked flycatchers), abundant golden-headed manakins, fewer white-chinned manakins, abundant cocoa and bare-eyed thrushes, all of the honeycreepers and blue dacnis, and more Trinidad euphonias than we have found anywhere else. We heard but could not find black-tailed tityras (a species we always seem to leave behind) and admit that the numbers of raptors (5) and tanagers (5) were low in this area. We also might have spent more time flushing and checking on all the seedeaters and grassquits in the cultivated areas and near town. Trapping of song-birds does occur in this area (as it does everywhere in Trinidad), but perhaps at a lower rate, judging from the large numbers of these birds around Gran Riviere. And of course there was the thrill of watching 12 leatherback turtles depositing eggs on the beach in front of our room, plus a thirteenth at dawn one morning, which made our stay the more memorable as a natural history 'event'. Should you want a guide to show you the specialty plants of the rainforest, a local expert (Cyril) is available at the hotel to show you around. He also has a boat he can use to take you to remote beaches along the north coast. You might also check out Gordon Trace (marked by a "street sign"), which pokes its way into the mountains along side a small creek just west of town, over an incredibly decrepit wooden bridge. We only birded the first mile or so, but it looked very promising. The Mt. Plaisir Hotel is definitely already included in our next itinerary, since every hike we took this time produced more that we hadn't seen. We're sure our next trip will be no different.
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